The St. Paul Port Authority has partnered with United Properties to tear down and eventually replace the current home of the St. Paul Saints, which will likely be replaced by a 190,000-square-foot office-warehouse building.

"It's a pretty big deal," Port Authority spokesman Tom Collins said. "It's a 12-acre site. When the Saints move downtown, we're going to demolish it and redevelop it, and United Properties is our partner in this effort. We have two years to market it."

Made up of United Properties and the Port Authority's subsidiary Capital City Properties, the joint venture will be called MVP Real Estate.

The 6,000-seat stadium opened in 1982, and officials hope to use the 12.8 acres for something more in keeping with Energy Park Drive's existing business center. The Port Authority plans to receive the title to the land next year and complete demolition and site cleanup by mid-2015.

Brandon Champeau, assistant vice president of development with United Properties, said his company now envisions a 190,000- to 200,000-square-foot building spanning 2 acres.

The building, which could open in fall 2016, would likely have four to six tenants leasing space, offering a total of 200 to 300 jobs.

"The market is ripe. UP is ready. We're ready," Hilleman said.

Construction of the "flex" office and warehouse building that could accommodate light manufacturing and commercial tenants would begin next year.

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United Properties, which formed in 1916 to manage the assets of Hamm's Brewing Co., will celebrate its centennial birthday around the time tenants arrive.

The joint partnership gives United Properties access to the land that Midway Stadium sits on -- a $3 million value. United Properties will invest $2.5 million in cash in building construction, on top of a $9 million bank loan the company would secure.

United Properties would put in another $541,000 in services such as building design and marketing. Profits from lease revenue would be split evenly between the Port Authority's subsidiary and United Properties.

"We supply the land. They supply the equity," said Lee Krueger, a Port Authority real estate and development official. "Instead of them paying us for the land, we get paid through cash flow during the tenure of the joint venture."

The joint partnership is considered a long-term arrangement with no specified end date, though the parties have the right to buy each other out.

This is the Port Authority's fifth joint venture project, with the latest being the Interstate Partners building by the Beacon Bluff Business Center and the old 3M campus.

Since the 1970s, the Port Authority has converted 214 acres of former Superfund land along Energy Park Drive between Snelling Avenue and Lexington Parkway into the 25-building Energy Park Business Center.

The land has mostly been sold to private developers for office and light-industrial buildings, as well as townhomes, condominiums and apartments. The Port Authority retains "a couple remnants," said Monte Hilleman, a real estate and redevelopment manager with the agency.

The Port Authority's Energy Park Utility Co. heats and cools the 2 million square feet of office and industrial space throughout the business center. The utility, established in the 1980s after the national energy crisis, was recently upgraded from a two-pipe to a four-pipe system, allowing heating and cooling to be individualized for different buildings.

"Everybody was either heating or everybody was cooling," Hilleman said. "Now, they can pick and choose."

The Saints, who have played at Midway Stadium since the early 1990s, will move into a new 7,000-seat ballpark in 2015. The ballpark is being constructed by the city of St. Paul off Fifth and Broadway streets in Lowertown.

The decision to partner with United Properties was approved Tuesday at a Port Authority board of commissioners meeting. The company, which maintains headquarters in Bloomington and Denver, has been owned by the Pohlad family since 1998.